1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a classification apparatus for sport videos and more particularly a classification apparatus for sport videos capable of classifying scenes of sport videos not structured clearly depending on a level of the importance by automatically analyzing the visual features or audio feature of uncompressed or compressed sport video. Further, the invention relates to a classification apparatus for sport videos capable of classifying sport videos into scenes having various levels of importance at low cost and providing effective retrieval and browsing of the sport videos and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As for a conventional technology, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-199332 has disclosed an apparatus for extracting highlights of important events by evaluating the audio level of a sport video. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-251581 has disclosed an apparatus for extracting a video scene having an importance from sport videos having no clear structure to create video skims by using action index, situation index and importance determination parameter based thereon.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-69437 has disclosed an apparatus for retrieving highlight scenes by retrieving an image matching a representative image (reference image) from recorded videos. Additionally, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-55613 has disclosed an apparatus for detecting a goal scene or applause from recorded videos and playing back segments before and after that one as a highlight while fast-forwarding other segments.
Of the conventional technology, the apparatuses disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-199332 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-55613 cannot be applied to detailed scene classification because their objects are to extract a specific event in sport videos accompanying applause and goal scene. Although the apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-251581 can be applied to sport videos having no clear structure, it can be difficult to apply it to general purpose at low computational cost because there are many kinds of indexes to be added and they are complicated and the sport video which can be handled is relatively limited. Further, in the apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-69437, it is difficult to specify any representative image for general purpose. Because the apparatus uses only visual features, there is also a possibility that the highlight which can be retrieved is limited.